Page 131 of Poison Wood

“She’s going to try to pin Crowley’s murder on us.”

“Who is us?”

“That’s why she wanted us in the basement. It probably has to do with whatever is over there.” She points to the boxes and papers with a shaky finger. “And then your dad showed up.” She whimpers as she looks down at him. “And then he fell and I started screaming and—”

“Summer.” My breathing falters. “Stop talking.” I need to get upstairs and call for help, but it feels as if I’m breathing through a straw. I tell myself not to panic, but panic is all I feel. My chest starts to feel tight.

Oh no, not here, I think. Not now.

Four things I can see, my father, the filing cabinets, the dryers, the shotgun. I close my eyes. Three things I can hear. Creaking on the stairs, Summer sobbing next to me. The third sound stops my panic attack cold and replaces it with real panic. A clacking sound, followed by a soft click-clack and a solid metallic clunk. A shotgun just got racked. I open my eyes, and Rosalie is aiming her shotgun at me for the second time.

Summer screams, and my body starts to shake. “I need to get my father out of here. He’s injured. He needs to get to a hospital.”

Rosalie studies my father.

“Rosalie,” I say.

She looks at Summer. “Where is she?”

Summer whimpers. “I don’t know.”

Rosalie glances up the stairs, then back to me. “What are you doing here?”

“Please put the gun down,” I say.

“You’re not supposed to be here. This isn’t about you.”

Rosalie made it clear to me at her house how she feels about the unfairness of it all. Her anger for what happened to her brother is understandable, but is she angry enough to pull that trigger?

Summer has stopped rocking, but I catch her looking at the file cabinets and overturned boxes on the far wall again.

I hold my father closer. “He’s hurt. You’re a nurse. You could help him.”

Rosalie’s face softens.

I maintain eye contact with her. “Whatever this was supposed to be, it’s changed, and I need you to please help me.”

She lowers the gun, and I exhale. “Let me have a look.” She sets the gun on the ground and kneels beside my father, cradling his head in her hands. “We need to get him to a hospital.”

“Nobody’s going anywhere,” a woman says in a calm Southern drawl.

Rosalie and I turn toward Summer, but she’s not the one who spoke.

Eleanor Chamberlain walks out from the shadow by the file cabinet, wearing a tailored cream suit the same color as her hair.

I haven’t seen Summer’s mother in years, but she still looks the way I remember her at parents’ weekend, poised and beautiful. She stands out against the mildewed rot in this basement. Eleanor’s beauty and calmness are not helping my anxiety. They are adding to it.

My mind is tripping over itself, trying to make sense of what is happening. If Rosalie called my father and Katrina’s father, it wouldmake sense she called Summer’s mother too. But why? What the hell does Eleanor Chamberlain meanNobody is going anywhere?

As I start to speak, Eleanor says, “Rosalie thinks she can frame us. For Archibald Crowley’s murder.” She stands next to Summer, who’s twisting her hands in front of her.

I turn to Rosalie, but her eyes are on her gun, lying at Eleanor’s feet.

The air in the basement feels heavy like it does at home just before a spring storm. I glance at my father’s gun and wonder how quickly I can grab it. Then I spot my tote, the stun gun peeking out from the opening. I shift closer to it.

“I called you,” Rosalie says. “But I also called the DA and the judge to show them who you really are. I thought this place would be appropriate.”

Eleanor Chamberlain smiles. “You’re such a fool, Rosalie.”